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Untitled (I Do Not Always Feel Colored)

1990

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Glenn Ligon, Untitled (I Do Not Always Feel Colored), 1990 2001.275

Glenn Ligon, Untitled (I Do Not Always Feel Colored), 1990. Oil stick and gesso on panel, 80 × 30 1/16 × 1 1/2 in. (203.2 × 76.4 × 3.8 cm). Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; gift of The Bohen Foundation in honor of Thomas N. Armstrong III 2001.275

Courtesy of the Artist and Regen Projects, Los Angeles

To make this painting, Glenn Ligon borrowed a phrase—“I do not always feel colored "—from a 1928 essay called “How It Feels to Be Colored Me” by author and anthropologist Zora Neale Hurston. In the essay, the writer says she did not see herself as black or different from other people until she was thirteen years old and was sent to school outside the African American community in Eaton, Florida where she grew up. Ligon is interested in exploring what it means to be an individual, and what it means to be part of a group.

What did Glenn Ligon paint on?

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“My job is not to produce answers. My job is to produce good questions.”

—Glenn Ligon

What did Glenn Ligon use to make this work?

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Making Objects Speak

What you’ll need

An object with flat surfaces, pencil, marker, or crayon, stencils, glue, sand, feathers, glitter

Find an object around your home with flat surfaces. For example, you could use a mirror, a box, a paper plate, or a book.
You’re going to be adding things to this object, so make sure it’s ok to change it into an art work first.
Think of a phrase or sentence that interests you. It could be something you’ve read in a book or poem, or something you write yourself.
Decide how you’d like to add these words to your object. You could write them yourself with a pencil, marker or crayon. You could use a stencil to draw on the letters and then add other materials, such as gluing on some sand, feathers, or glitter.
Think about how you want to present these words. How can you draw attention to what they mean to you, and what you’re trying to say with them?
You could make your words bold, thin, repeated, erased, small, big, or different colors. Try several ways of writing your words.
What object and words did you choose? Why?